microstutter in 6.2.7

[Polypro]

Make sure the property (I had three of them) encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream= is set to true for the HDHR.

P

[polen]

I've seen stutter too. Mine video and audio will freeze for a split second off and on. I have a seperate server client setup as you can see in my sig. I have found that the SageTVTranscoder.exe on my client is my cause for stutter. Not sure why its running, but when I exit SageTV with a Alt+F4 and bring up taskmanager, the SageTVTranscoder.exe is still running and using about 12% cpu.

So what I do is stop the SageTVTranscoder.exe process, goto the sagetv directory and rename SageTVTranscoder.exe to SageTVTranscoder.old. SageTV runs fine for me without the transcoder and no stutter.

Oh, and I see my stutter only on HD programming which puts a high demand on the 100 Mbit network and SageTVTranscoder.exe was also hitting the network really hard, like about 40% of the 100 Mbit.

-Polen

[infocus13]

Polen, did stopping this service have a negative effect on any aspect of STV for you (i.e. watch live tv, record live tv, etc?)

Can any of the devs/experienced users comment on this process and what it does and whether it is safe to kill it?

Thanks.

[polen]

I only kill the SageTVTranscoder.exe on the client. It's needed on the server. I read at one time that the SageTVTranscoder on the client is for creating thumbnails, but I still see new thumbnails for new pictures and TV shows.

I have seen no difference on the client after removing SageTVTranscoder.exe, but all I do is record/watch TV, DVDs, music, pictures and imported videos.

-Polen

[sleonard]

With 6.2.10 the stuttering actually got worse. My stuttering is different than what others have described here - audio was unaffected but the video (standard def from a pvr250 via s-vid) seemed as if Sage was skipping a frame or two several times per second resulting in a jerky motion. In any case, I installed the latest PowerDVD and switched Sage to PowerDVD decoders from nVidia and the stuttering has ceased.

I have been using the nVidia decoders for years without any issues until the 6.2 betas but the new PowerDVD ones are pretty good so I'll just keep using them and call it good.

S

[DFranch]

Originally Posted by sleonard

With 6.2.10 the stuttering actually got worse. My stuttering is different than what others have described here - audio was unaffected but the video (standard def from a pvr250 via s-vid) seemed as if Sage was skipping a frame or two several times per second resulting in a jerky motion. In any case, I installed the latest PowerDVD and switched Sage to PowerDVD decoders from nVidia and the stuttering has ceased.

I have been using the nVidia decoders for years without any issues until the 6.2 betas but the new PowerDVD ones are pretty good so I'll just keep using them and call it good.

S

What version of PowerDVD are you using? Is it 7?

[sleonard]

7.2 Ultra

S

[mangriotis]

My stuttering is confirmed to be the stream from HDHR, not Sage (I can reproduce it playing the file through VLC). It seems to be able to tune a channel and record fine, but if I try to watch a different channel (i.e. the other tuner in the HDHR), it stutters severely.

In addition, now Sage is shutting down with an error in Vista (32-bit) regularly after a day or so. I am going to reinstall everything from scratch to see if this fixes it. I am not sure what I did wrong, but it's killing me happening so close to premier week.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Polypro

I was finally in a position to investigate this last night. I'm on 6.2.8 and was watching a recorded show (VH1 SD) recorded on a PVR500. The program went into it's s-l-o-w m-o-t-i-o-n stutter. I windowed Sage and checked CPU usage...normal. A Rew would clear it up, but it would return a minute later. I stopped Sage UI/Service and changed from Nvidia to Cyberlink decoders. I also enabeled Debug Logging. I went back and started the VH1 program, where I left off. It happened again, but now I had the logs. I sent them to Sage this morning. This has only appeared with the 6.2.x betas...never saw this from 2.2.8 to 6.1.9. I originally thought this was a problem with the HDHR and recordings in progress, but I see it on PVR500 complete recorded stuff too, so... It's like a buffer is waiting for data...like watching a youtube video that's playing faster than it's downloading.

P

Exact same issue. I've been banging my head on this almost all summer. I spent about 8 hours trying to fix this in the last few days and now I've read this thread. I will try that property and registry setting. I'll report back in a few days with results.

[ToxMox]

The property and the buffers change hasn't really helped me. Even happened on some SD material to me today. I can't help but think this is something that was introduced into Sage recently. I'd love to try more suggestions. Doesn't matter which decoder I use either. During the slowmotion stuff there is nothing happening at all in the client log so there isn't really any info to relay.

[jlindborg]

Originally Posted by mangriotis

My stuttering is confirmed to be the stream from HDHR, not Sage (I can reproduce it playing the file through VLC). It seems to be able to tune a channel and record fine, but if I try to watch a different channel (i.e. the other tuner in the HDHR), it stutters severely.

In addition, now Sage is shutting down with an error in Vista (32-bit) regularly after a day or so. I am going to reinstall everything from scratch to see if this fixes it. I am not sure what I did wrong, but it's killing me happening so close to premier week.

I had a similiar issue (firing up the 2nd tuner wreaked all kinds of havoc) - I fixed mine by enabling my 2nd NIC on the Sage server and hooking the HDHR up to it directly instead of running it through my switch - two streams introduces a whole big bunch of traffic and the packet collisions I was getting were really high when combined with client streaming activity and other things going on with my network. My recordings off HDHR have been smooth as silk since doing this (often two at a time along with two analog recordings on Sundays - gotta record all the sports action after all!).

My switch is a gigabit 16 porter and I was supprised this was it - but with traffic hitting %40+, collisions go nuts and can cause the behavior you're seeing. My 2nd nic is only a 10/100 but it handls it just fine with two HD streams and takes a big load off my switch that doesn't really need to be there. If you can, this is definitely worth trying.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Make sure the property (I had three of them) encode_digital_tv_as_program_stream= is set to true for the HDHR.

P

I don't want to jinx myself or speak to soon but about an hour ago I did the opposite and set this to false for all my HDHRs and I haven't had the slowmo stutter yet. This would make me think that there are problems with how Sage is encoding the BDA streams from the HDHR as program streams or perhaps something in the playback differs. When I drag mpg files that were recorded while the property was set to true the default demuxer is MPEG 2 Demultiplexer and if I drag the TS files after setting them to false into graphedit the demuxer is the Nvidia Transport one.

[mangriotis]

Originally Posted by jlindborg

I had a similiar issue (firing up the 2nd tuner wreaked all kinds of havoc) - I fixed mine by enabling my 2nd NIC on the Sage server and hooking the HDHR up to it directly instead of running it through my switch - two streams introduces a whole big bunch of traffic and the packet collisions I was getting were really high when combined with client streaming activity and other things going on with my network. My recordings off HDHR have been smooth as silk since doing this (often two at a time along with two analog recordings on Sundays - gotta record all the sports action after all!).

My switch is a gigabit 16 porter and I was supprised this was it - but with traffic hitting %40+, collisions go nuts and can cause the behavior you're seeing. My 2nd nic is only a 10/100 but it handls it just fine with two HD streams and takes a big load off my switch that doesn't really need to be there. If you can, this is definitely worth trying.

No kidding. How can I tell if I am getting traffic collisions? Do you follow the DHCP standalone instructions at the Silicondust forums in order to connect directly?

I started a new thread here but what you're describing seems like it may be the issue. I never had this problem when dealing with HDHR manager, but now it's using BDA... we may be onto something here.

[mangriotis]

I tried connecting directly through a 10/100 PCI ethernet card. Same behavior. I don't think this is my issue.

If it matters (which it might), it seems to occur (worse) with stations that broadcast in 1080i (CBS, NBC, WGN) more than those that use 720p (ABC, FOX, WTTW).

[sleonard]

If you are using a switched network you should not be getting any packet collisions at all. That is the main difference between switches and hubs; switches eliminate the collision domain.

S

[jlindborg]

Yeah, that makes sense - I think it had to do with too much traffic on the one NIC myself. I spent about 6 weeks trying to run this down with Sage and Silicone dust - sent lots of clips from my local newscast (which always stuttered) to both parties. When I watched the traffic one night I noticed a bunch of thrash - two HD recordings (two news casts - I like the sports casts on both), two clients streaming out (my wife prefers not to watch the news and watches a recorded show on another TV) - I noticed the 2nd client is "two hopping" off the NAS - so it pulls the show to the sage server and then streams it to the client - so there was a ton of activity there. By moving the HDHR to a 2nd local NIC, it immediately cleared the problem.

I spent a ton of time fiddling with signal strength/SQ to be sure that wasn't it, updated the firmware and drivers, went back to using the HD manager etc... etc... it pretty much never had any impact. The minute I kicked it onto it's own NIC its been smooth as silk across the boards under very heavy use.

[Polypro]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I don't want to jinx myself or speak to soon but about an hour ago I did the opposite and set this to false for all my HDHRs and I haven't had the slowmo stutter yet. This would make me think that there are problems with how Sage is encoding the BDA streams from the HDHR as program streams or perhaps something in the playback differs. When I drag mpg files that were recorded while the property was set to true the default demuxer is MPEG 2 Demultiplexer and if I drag the TS files after setting them to false into graphedit the demuxer is the Nvidia Transport one.

Up until the support email suggested it, I ran Sage in T.S. mode as well. When I went to check the properties after the email. I had the main encode_digital_tv property set to false, while the tuner properties were set to true...so no wonder I had glitches. Keep us posted on how "False" works...I'll do the same with "True". The HDHR sends a Transport Stream from the box.

P

[mangriotis]

Polypro - I am a little confused by your statement. Can you explain which properties exactly were changed? If I search through my sage.properties file, all references to encode_digital_tv are set to true. I am not sure how to make Sage capture .ts or .mpg (I think all my files are saved as .mpg). This may be my issue.

Also, since premiers started this week, some things started recording, without errors. Now I am thinking the slow motion is occurring only when starting from Live TV (or selecting the show from the guide while running).

[Polypro]

There should be one "main" property right before your tuners start. Then for each HDHR tuner, there is also a property. When I was having trouble, my "main" property was set to false, but the property for each tuner was set to true. I don't know if the main one is still used, but having them all the same seems like a good idea. If you set them to false, you will get TS recordings instead of MPG. I don't know what Sage prefers/works best with.

P

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by Polypro

Up until the support email suggested it, I ran Sage in T.S. mode as well. When I went to check the properties after the email. I had the main encode_digital_tv property set to false, while the tuner properties were set to true...so no wonder I had glitches. Keep us posted on how "False" works...I'll do the same with "True". The HDHR sends a Transport Stream from the box.

P

While things were set to false for me I was noticing a lot of little pixelations and other defects which led me to believe that something is/was wrong with my signal. I moved some splitters around and tweaked my amp and attenuator and switched my HDHRs to QAM from OTA and now it seems I am getting a better feed/signal even though the numbers/stats of the percentages of the signal quality/power and symbol quality aren't much different than they were before. Anyways I went back to setting the property to encode as program stream to true and last night I only had a few slowmo stutters on only WNBCDT and they were much briefer than before. When I was watching 1080i shows on nbc I was getting out of order frames with all my video decoders except for the SageTV Mpeg decoder if you can believe that. Right now my setup seems pretty solid with the exception of NBC not being perfect so I'll continue tweaking that but I'm guessing that most of these slowmo stutter problems are because the stream that Sage is encoding into mpegs has dropouts or corruption due to either signal issues in general or over/underpowering the signal to the tuners. I'll try and give another update at the end of the week after I've watched all my season premieres.